lucifer was the prettiest angel
by Nygmatech
Summary: But Two-Face knows by now that the Riddler never shoots blanks. Perhaps that was the riddle all along. Dent/Nygma, Slash


lucifer was the prettiest angel

The Riddler stands in his bedroom doorway like a carved wax angel, some sort of elusive creature extinct long ago; rare and obscenely beautiful. His eyes are bright green and unfocused in the absence of his coloured contact lenses; his ginger roots are peeking out among tousled locks of nondescript brown hair. The overlarge t-shirt he's wearing, the "Gotham University" lettering having long peeled off, slips off of one pale shoulder.

And he clicks the safety off of the gun in his hand.

"I told you," Edward says, his voice light and dangerous, "that if you ever came back here I'd greet you with a weapon. Yes, shocking I know, the Riddler was _serious_ for once in his _life-_"

Dent makes a sudden move forward into the room, a hand extended as if to touch Edward. He reconsiders, then, when the other man flinches back and raises the gun. He retreats back into the bedroom, a wild animal licking its wounds.

"Edward," he says, voice low and cautionary. Slow movements so as not to disturb him, he backs Edward into the room, who watches his every twitch with a weary eye.

"I'm not here to turn you in."

"Why should I believe you?" he hisses, green eyes narrowing to slits. The gun, steady in his hand. "After… after _this_," and he makes a grand gesture at the left side of Dent's face, who flinches back almost instinctually, before he realizes that yes, Edward is referring to the grafts of skin there, smooth and flawless and _perfect _like the rest of him. Like before.

"You _deflected,_" he continues, the words in Edward's mouth sounding like the dirtiest insult in the book. "You changed, Harvey! You got _better!_"

"Things change," Dent argues, softly, in the light of Two-Face's breathy chuckle in the back of his head. "That doesn't mean they get better."

"What _we _had was better!" the Riddler shouts back in frustration. And his voice cracks, a lump rising in his throat. He doesn't cry.

_("Don't worry, Edward, you'll be a big boy someday.")_

"Bad people," Dent says eventually, after miles and miles of silence between them, "don't always do bad things."

They're close now, too close—and the back of Edward's knees bump into the back of his bed, the green satin sheets cool against his bare legs.

As the smaller, younger man draws up to his full height, looks Dent as full in the eyes as he can, in the half-light of the drawn curtains of the bedroom, the heavy scent of Edward's narcissus flower perfume settles around them, left over from days, weeks before. As if Edward can drown out any last bit of humanity in this way, lathering it on his wounds like an all-purpose antibiotic.

And hesitantly, Dent reaches to touch him, his hand hovering over Edward's heart—there is a riddle there, tattooed on the skin stretched taut over his ribcage. _You have me, but cannot hold me; gain me and quickly lose me; if kept I can be great; if betrayed I will break._

He's heard it before, a supposedly simple puzzle. Something all very amateur for the _Riddler._

"You never get it, do you?" Edward asks suddenly, and his voice just sounds very bitter. His eyes swim with streams of binary numbers and tiny little A's, T's, G's, C's. This is how he perceives the world. "Ther can be more than one correct answer, but only one of them is right. It's always so black and white with you."

_Is that why you left?_ Two-Face asks, languidly, his gravelly voice ringing in Dent's ears.

"The heart. That's the answer, isn't it?"

But when Dent tries to kiss him, he's met with the barrel of Edward's gun to the back of his head, the dead center. He has a knack for these types of things.

His face turned away from Dent, he calculates the situation, evaluating every variable.

"I want…" he whispers, a half-murdered thought, _to destroy you._

Instead, he says, and is surprised by the honesty in his cold voice, "it isn't the same."

"I've changed my mind."

"I have some hot oil on the stove."

Two-Face smiles, and for a moment, the space inbetween one second and the next, Harvey thinks he could live with this.

And Edward pulls the trigger—

_("Riddle me this: When does a killer not kill?")_

Welcome home.


End file.
